TSMC profits down 22.5 percent, still able to afford a new yacht

It’s not been a great year for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company: the chip foundry behind Qualcomm and nVidia’s silicon (amongst others) saw profits slump by 22.5 percent in the last quarter of 2011. Like everything in this world, however, trouble is relative: the business still made a net profit of just over a billion US dollars. CEO Morris Chang pointed a wealthy digit toward customers clearing out old inventory and said that new orders for phone and tablet CPUs would arrive shortly — thanks to a 28-nanometer factory that opened its doors around the same time. He then casually mentioned that a 20-nanometer facility will open its doors towards the end of this year, followed by a 14-nanometer block by 2014. We’ve got the report on the financials — for those with a currency convertor and some spare time to hand — after the break.